(I think we did it!) Entrepreneurial learning for 100 engineering students!

You went from 27 to 100 students?!

Enrolment jumped from some 27 students last year to 100 this year in a still-pretty-new masters-level course in innovation and entrepreneurship at the Schulich School of Engineering. (And we also taught 35 undergrads at the same time this year.)

(Holy crap, right?)

With the goal of meeting this new demand and retaining the unique, personalized, authentic, and industry-relevant learning experience, the school invested in three TAs and scheduled things using a 3-lab section model in order to maintain the 35 student max per facilitated section.

(Can’t be done, right?)

It may have run the instructor and three TAs right off their feet at times, but it was a success and we it believe the result pushes the envelope of what’s possible in educating for entrepreneurship and innovation.

And we'd be grateful for the chance to share the details with you.

Come and learn what we did / how we did it

Please join us. We’ll share what happened, you’ll see some of our students in action, and we’ll discuss the exciting possible futures of this kind of course, e.g.:

• We used a new levels- and game-based 'super textbook’ called the Idea Maker Course that alllowed us to flip lecture time into workshop time and had people levelling up their skills before and between classes, e.g.: https://www.straightupbusiness.institute/courses/idea-maker

• The students funded a suite of their own best venture and learning prizes (in part to help me avoid and manage a potentially perceived conflict of interest but, more importantly,) to encourage deep learning and get away from the more-prize-money-than-we-need-right-now problem, the over-confident-student-team challenge, and, especially, the pervasive judges-as-bosses-of-the-learning model, e.g.:

1. $600 for the best overall venture - via the pitch (team-based prize, guest panel helps decide based on final pitches) - i.e. How well can we communicate the value we want to create to an external panel?

2. $600 for the best overall venture - via an evidence-based self-assessment (team-based prize, by venture self-assessments developed by the teams over the six weeks) - i.e. How much can we demonstrate we are the de facto world expert at our idea and customer?)

3. $600 for the most meaningful insights and learnings from video-based look-back learning reflections on the learning process (individual prize) - i.e. Putting the typical products of learning aside (e.g. pitches and biz models), what was my own learning process and what did I personally learn from it?

4. $600 for demonstrated mastery of key competencies (individual prize, based on demonstrated mastery through the Un-exam, moving us in this direction: https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_teach_for_mastery_not_test_scores) - i.e. Have I mastered the key competencies and to what extent, independent of how great others think our own idea might be or how great it might actually be?

• We had an undergraduate TA from the business faculty among the mix, who grew confidently into a position of leadership - which is no easy task when starting down a classroom full of engineering master’s students!

• To get to a final grade - because unfortunately we all need one - we assessed the course pretty differently than most with peer-, self-, and teacher/TA-assessment all being integral to the final mark. (Even though the self- and peer- are very hard at first!) We did this in a way that’s authentic to and supports the learning a nascent entrepreneur or corporate innovator needs to do outside of school. Here’s are a few pretty well-populated early-stage Idea Pages as examples of this: https://ideas.straightupbusiness.institute/683-4okPbW and https://ideas.straightupbusiness.institute/683-duRUCE and https://ideas.straightupbusiness.institute/683-Qv9bbm and https://ideas.straightupbusiness.institute/519-TCDoWN and https://ideas.straightupbusiness.institute/519-BuwBgy and https://ideas.straightupbusiness.institute/683-NN9tTN. These are like a YouTube page or Facebook profile except for your venture idea and with an embedded scoring and comment system. Be sure to check out the bottom of these pages too.

• We ran a big chunk of the classes as sleeves-rolled-up workshops to implement a six-week 'idea design sprint' (turned 'deep hack' for some), enabling the students to design highly impactful and imminently feasible new venture concepts , e.g.:
• Project launch video: https://vimeo.com/316869249/dd26603005
• Project page with all the gory details: https://www.straightupbusiness.institute/innovation-and-entrepreneurship/venture-design-studio
• Full hour-by-hour course schedule from basic training to mini-capstone: https://www.straightupbusiness.institute/innovation-and-entrepreneurship

• We ran another chunk of the classes as engaging discussion-based lectures to explore the leading edge of innovation at the boundary between theory and practice, dispelling the myths of words like disruptive and breakthrough innovation and arming our tehnology-focused engineers with the knowledge to understand and design changes across the entire innovation value chain - from the scientific lab, to the technology-filled garage, to the corporate boardroom.

• Instead of a final exam, students also wrote what we call an 'Un-exam’ over a one-month period at the end of the course - in order to demonstrate their understanding and mastery of key course concepts, e.g.: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CGsRjIE6V2Lvu677IzjEaIThrHBK40im2f9xX8Hdz08/edit?usp=sharing

Can't make it?

We’ll be sad if you can’t make it but that’s still okay:

• You can pass this on to someone else who can attend on your behalf

• And please stay tuned - we’ll be sending out some key resources and a summary

Thank you!

Thank you for your interest in what we're doing. As well as sharing a bit of an ROI with the fine folks at Schulich, the goals of this meeting include sharing across disciplinary boundaries on campus, sharing with folks off campus, and seeking kindred spirits and opportunities to collaborate.

Don't hesitate to be in touch. Thank you!

Alex.

Dr. Alex Bruton, PEng, MBA

Senior Instructor and Schulich Design Champion, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary

VP Pedagogy and Learning, United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE)

Co-founder and Faculty Director, USASBE Teaching and Learning Scholars Program

International Entrepreneurship Educator in Residence (IEEiR), Tecnológico de Monterrey

President, The Innographer and Co-founder, Straight Up Business Institute